


Why are There Books in the Air Duct? Why is There Hot Sauce in the Bathroom?

by easyforpauline



Series: an early name used for videophones [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Banter, Bathing/Washing, Begging, Breathplay, Bucky Barnes Does His Best, Crying, Dom/sub, Domestic, Face Slapping, Hair-pulling, Humiliation, Insults, Kneeling, M/M, Morse Code, Mouth Fisting, Obsessive Behavior, Painplay, Pet Names, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Sort of? As in holding someone underwater, Stone Top, Television, Tied-Together-Shoelace Trip: Erotic Edition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-05
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-21 16:03:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7394185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/easyforpauline/pseuds/easyforpauline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He takes Steve’s thumb into his mouth. He flicks his tongue over the tip. He lets it go. “But I don’t think it works that way for me. Hurting. It’s context-dependent. I’m like a chameleon if a chameleon wanted your hands in its mouth.”  </p>
<p>(In the early days of living in their new apartment, Bucky lives religiously by the schedule he keeps in his pocket. Prequel to "Why Did You Think a Big Balloon Would Stop People?" but meant to be read second. Can also be read first. Can also be read on its own. Choose your own adventure.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Why are There Books in the Air Duct? Why is There Hot Sauce in the Bathroom?

**Author's Note:**

> Some specific warnings about mental health aspects in the end notes.

It’s easier, he realizes after three weeks in the apartment, to take long baths than it is to shower. He’s had himself on a schedule, written in neat Palmer Method on an index card that he keeps in his jacket’s inner pocket, folded lengthwise and widthwise. Perfectly creased. Hopefully, Steve doesn’t know about the schedule. He’s allowed to know most things, but it’s easier, Bucky realized immediately, to let Steve think his inner machinery is keeping him going, that he isn’t terrified he’ll become the Sahara if he doesn’t have _3:15-3:30 p.m. Go get a glass of water and drink it_ spelled out in black gel pen.

Baths are the first change he makes to the index card, with the help of a little wheel of correctional fluid from Duane Reade. It’s an intense matter of shuffling, seeing as how he’s got to triple the allotted shower time, and it would make more sense to throw the index card out and start fresh. But he likes the little wheel of correctional fluid from Duane Reade. Obstinate and comforted, he uses the little wheel of correctional fluid from Duane Reade.

What he’s been doing: nightly shower, low water pressure, painfully hot, facing away from the spray, 8:15-8:30 p.m, when Steve is usually checking e-mails and so unlikely to be curious if something goes awry and the shower exceeds its acceptable fifteen minutes, which, by the time he decides to switch to baths, has never happened, not even for an extra minute.

Daily showers seem absurdly luxurious when he isn’t doing anything to work up a sweat like Steve does every morning, but he doesn’t want two index cards.

If he skips showering one day, will he ever shower again?

It’s a Thursday. His schedule is the same as it is every other day. It’s 7:30 p.m. and he’s sitting on the couch, working his way down a list of television episodes, transcribing each one—one per day—as he goes.

In Hollywood, five months ago, he developed a hunch that he might have spent a stint in the mid-twentieth century infiltrating the set of a TV show. There wasn’t much to go on. He walked along a brief scuttle of Hollywood Walk of Fame stars. He visited Madame Tussauds and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Judy Garland’s Dorothy Gale and wondered how to properly, physically mourn in that moment, until a middle-aged man tried nudging him out of the way.

He felt tight, closed. He fled. He got buffalo wings. He took the train to his hotel and wrote in his journal, “I have a hunch that I might have spent a stint once in the mid-twentieth century infiltrating the set of a TV show.” His hand didn’t feel connected to the pen.

His second hunch was a lot more important, developed as he read and reread the first hunch and sounded it out for himself and imagined saying it while shaking a stranger’s hand at a party. What party? A party.

Second hunch: If he told Steve his first hunch, Steve might laugh at him.

And oh, wasn’t that warm; wasn’t that beautiful, to imagine Steve laughing at him. Shaking his head. His eye teeth lethal and rounded. Finding Bucky lovely and dumb.

That wasn’t a hunch he wrote down. He just stuck it in his cheek like he was hoarding sustenance for winter.

The next morning, even, he felt certain that he’d had no reason to think that about the TV show set. It was a suspicion born purely from how rabbity he’d felt between the Judy Garland figure and the swarming crowd. But he started watching TV anyway, when he didn’t want to go out but was restless inside. Scribbling down notes.

He didn’t have a laptop then, just a small tablet to augment his burner phone. With a full keyboard at his disposal, he thinks it would be stupid to _not_ transcribe what he’s watching, even if he’s only printed out one of the scripts for safekeeping so far: _The X-Files_ season four, episode nine, “Terma.” In that one, there were no left arms allowed.

Steve walks in; Jaime Sommers, with her cyborg body, is standing next to a lion; Bucky pauses the show. TV research has padding built into its scheduling due to heightened difficulty of multitasking and unpredictability of interruptions.

 “Am I interrupting?” Steve asks, coming to stand behind the couch. He has a plastic bag in his hand, and he puts it down on the floor with a tiny thunk.

“Always. Constantly.” Bucky turns his head a fraction and stretches his right arm behind him, so his fingers skate along Steve’s shirt, beckoning him closer.

Steve obliges, resting his chin on Bucky’s head and his elbows on the back of the couch to surround him. Bucky takes Steve’s left hand and kisses the knuckles, then turns it over and kisses the palm. He nips at the fat at the ball of his thumb, and Steve uses his other hand to pinch Bucky’s earlobe, quick and stinging, before twisting to kiss him almost there, lips to temporal bone.  

Bucky breathes, in, out, slow, low. Squeezes Steve’s left hand. Is grateful. “What’s in the bag?” he asks. “This is a stick-up. I’m armed. You gotta tell me.”

“Give me a sec. It’s a surprise.” Steve slides his hand out of Bucky’s hand, straightening, pushing playfully down on the back of Bucky’s head as he goes, to bow his neck, to make him grin before he looks at Steve over his shoulder.

Steve’s rustling through his one bag and then pulling out two smaller, thinner bags and standing with them held out in offering.

“They’re Epsom salts,” he says. “I thought it would help your pain if you had the option of taking a bath with these. This has lavender. And this one has mint. I didn’t know which you’d like.”

“You could have called and asked.” Bucky’s eyes are narrowed in a show of reading the packaging, but he smiles up at Steve, crooked and twisted, and—he hopes—loving.  
  
“Then it wouldn’t be a surprise.”

Bucky takes both bags from Steve’s hands, placing them next to him on the couch, lined up like they’re watching TV too. He says, “You’re an idiot.”

Steve pins him to the couch by his shoulders and kisses him upside-down. Sloppy.

The thing is, baths are longer than showers. There’s no time in his schedule for a test-run of a bath. If he decides to even try the salts, he’s going to have to commit to changing the whole thing around, and while he can change it around more later if he has to, he’d really rather not. It seems inelegant, that many changes. That many times whiting out and rewriting, and okay, yeah, he gets the symbolism. He’s great at symbolism. It would be inelegant. He knows better than anyone.

So he buys the little wheel of correctional fluid from Duane Reade. And he blocks himself out a whole nightly forty-five minutes for a bath.

He uses the mint salt, leaving the lavender on Steve’s bed with a note reading, “This is yours, asshole,” a cluster of hearts doodled at the bottom. He doesn’t need to be put to sleep. That’s all Steve. Steve vacuuming, pacing, doing push-ups in the living room. Three in the morning, doing push-ups in the living room. Looking like he isn’t really there.

Bucky hasn’t mentioned seeing this ritual on his way to get a glass of water one night (an unscheduled trip, but he has a list on the card’s flipside of acceptable exceptions to his schedule, and needing unforeseen fluids is number three).

While the tub fills, painfully hot as a shower, he sits on the floor with his knees to his chest, watching the slow spill of water, clouding with salt. This is still Steve’s e-mail time. Bucky has his newest alarm clock, the good kind with hands and bells, by the sink, so he can make sure he abides by the schedule.

He’s pretty skilled, really, at internal time-keeping anyway, a skill drilled into him at several different points in his life, but it’s better safe than unsafe ( _said Steven Grant Rogers not once_ , Bucky muses, mouth twitching).

Slow, hot spill. The room steamy and smelling of mint. He strips out of his jeans, boxers, double layers of sweatshirts, and sinks into the water before the tub is full.  It’s much too hot; his nerves flare and tell him to haul himself out, so he roots in place, swallowing the instinct with a shallow intake of breath.

Sensation happens along almost all of his skin simultaneously. So much of him is marked as physically present, and where he isn’t in water, he is starting to sweat. Like a fly buzzing in his ear, the sweat sets him on edge, but tells him that he’s not the only real thing; time is real too. Time rolls, wet and disgusting, down his neck.  

Their old places always had Epsom salts under the kitchen sink, good for Steve to soak in almost any day and good for Bucky when he was worn from boxing or running errands for his family because his ma sounded too frazzled on the phone and that always broke his heart. Never when he was worn from Steve working him over.

Once, Steve noticed him walking gingerly, careful of his thigh, which ached on account of Steve forcing him into weird positions two nights before. Steve pressed a hand into the muscle, massaging, and said, “Come on, idiot, have you even tried to do something for the pain?”

“Why would I do that?” Bucky asked, sighing, docile under the touch. “If you gave me a shirt for my birthday, would you like if I threw it out before it got too threadbare to wear? What a waste.”

He never knew anyone but Steve whose response to overwhelming joy was to look like he sucked on ten lemons in a row.

The tub fills almost to the edges, and for a moment, he contemplates letting it fill more, letting the water slosh over the sides, drowning the bathroom floor. Get everything liquid, everything hot. He could ask Steve to make him crawl around to dry it up, a Captain America uniform boot pushing down on his back the whole time. Or they could both lie down in it and pretend they’re on the beach, in the wettest sand, barely lapped by encroaching waves.

Or he could be normal and responsible and turn the water off. He does. He picks up the soap and wets it and uses it to draw lines on his face, down his neck, down his chest, down a leg. Dividing himself up into territories. He closes his eyes. He thinks that it was a good move to change his schedule around this way.

 

 

-

 

 

Every morning, from 10:00 to 11:00, he learns something new. The time is the only official limit, but he chose morning to suggest to himself an additional limit: that he not seek information he knows might fuck him up. If he does, he does so with the understanding that he’ll be fucked up all day. A bag of jumping nerves and a ghost at the same time. 

Only once, since implementing his schedule, has he made the mistake of ignoring this suggestion. He wanted to know what had become of his family’s home. The Barnes family owned their own home, and while it was small and heavily mortgaged, they were proud of it. It was where he learned to play piano, and it was the first place he ever lived with Steve.

The house was bought up by NYU. He asked Steve to make him cry the night after he learned. It didn’t take a lot of work. Just some slapping and murmuring. Then they held onto each other while Steve talked about his day.  

Today, he’s got a CPR dummy from the dumpster behind a high school laid out on his bedroom floor.  He’s rigged up a model of an AED from a shoebox and stray wires, and Sharpied angry eyebrows on the dummy’s face, above its empty eyes. An instructional video lingers, paused, on his laptop screen.

Armless and breathless, the dummy stares at him. A three dimensional rendering of _The Scream._  

“Me too, kid.” He pokes at its molded nipple. He lets the video begin.

Finding the right level of force to compress the chest is a problem. When he holds back like he thinks he should, nothing happens. Full force would squash the dummy to death. His trash compacter hands. It’s only the first round, and he tries to orbit around his own careful, clear-voiced counting. To find calm and composure in its gravitational pull.

He closes his lips around the dummy’s scream. His breath doesn’t raise the chest. His breath doesn’t raise the chest. He breathes too many times. His breath doesn’t raise the chest and the lips are still, hard, waiting for something, and—

“Shit. Shit, shit, shit, fuck, never mind, fuck, shit, sorry,” and he’s slamming the video paused, throwing the dummy under his table-bed, cradling his head in his hands hard enough that the fingers of the left tear out a bit of hair. His chest rises and falls with heavy breath. He says, “Shit,” again, and it sounds hollow.  

He still has to learn something. There’s fifty minutes left in which he has to learn something.

Heart a shaky thing, he closes the tab with the video. He opens up Google. He searches, “Bioluminescent animals.” Something pure to learn.

Later, he realizes a malfunctioning airway must be why the dummy was tossed in the dumpster; the stillness of the chest wasn’t caused by something he did. He keeps it under his bed anyway, draped in a sheet like a corpse in a metal drawer, or a post-coital couple on TV.

 

 

-

 

 

“You planning to knock or stay out there all night?” Bucky says. He sticks to the same volume he’d use if Steve were in the tub with him instead of lurking outside their closed bathroom door. Stopping and staring at the wall and struggling to make a simple decision and yadda yadda yadda might be a process Bucky’s intimately familiar with, but Steve’s been standing there silently for the past five minutes. For him, that’s kind of much.

“I hadn’t decided.” A noise against the wall, like maybe Steve’s kicked it to get himself going. “Are you fine with me coming in? I’ve gotta see a man about a horse.”

“There’s no horses in here, but you can come in anyway. It’s unlocked.” Almost always, he forces himself to ignore the urge to lock doors behind him, even when doing so might be normal. He doesn’t want to act like he isn’t safe in their home, like he isn’t safe with Steve.

Steve enters, and Bucky strikes a pin-up pose in the tub. One leg lifted with pointed toes, he gazes over his shoulder, mouth an _O._ Facial expressions based on simple shapes—cartoon expressions—are easy to get right. Steve snorts, and Bucky resumes taking a bath like he isn’t trying to seduce anyone.

“You know, you’re going to give me privacy-poisoning, all this respect for my—” he makes bunny ears with his fingers—“‘personal autonomy.’ What was your contingency plan for not knocking?”

“Oh, well. Thought maybe I’d take a leak in the kitchen sink. Or an empty Gatorade bottle. I’m a resourceful man.” Steve’s still hanging out by the door, watching Bucky with half-lidded eyes, apparently entranced by something in the non-seductive, scarred-up body before him.

Even still, his shoulders are drawn up like he thinks he might be trespassing, and his hands are shoved in his pockets. The best way to deal with Steve when he gets like that is to be an asshole.

Bucky says, “If you piss in our kitchen sink, I’m getting a divorce. I’m getting you kicked off the lease. I’m taking any and all legal recourse I can. I wash fruit in that sink, Steve.”

“But the Gatorade bottle would be okay?” The cagey strangeness is already bleeding out of him.

“Hell, I’ve got no room to talk.”

Something that, unlike the schedule, Steve is allowed to know about: Bucky spent his first two months away from Hydra using hotel bathrooms as infrequently as possible, in case there were hidden cameras. Eventually, he regained enough feelings about personal hygiene not to care. Let whatever sick hotel fucks film his dick.

“I can give you room to talk.” Steve angles himself toward Bucky and unzips his fly. “Open wide.” Like his superpowers include arcing a perfect stream of urine into Bucky’s mouth.

Bucky pokes his tongue into his cheek and grins at him. Barely moving his lips, he says, “Maybe later.”

Steve walks close enough to get a good grip on Bucky’s hair and pull his head back. It makes Bucky’s breath quicken. Positioned like this, he can only see Steve at the edge of his vision, a fragile behemoth. A tough chin and blond hair. Bucky opens wide.

“Thank you, dear,” Steve says, church-formal, and lets go. Lets Bucky’s head droop forward.

Steve pisses in the toilet like some kind of prude, and Bucky stares at Steve’s knees, where his tight jeans scrunch up into riverine ripples. He wants to kiss them. Hug Steve’s knees to his body and pass out like that, maybe drunk in a way he can’t be anymore, maybe endorphin-flooded and bruise-dappled, maybe eased into a deep freeze for the first time in—

He picks up the soap, holds it tight in one hand and then the other. Finds a slick, sure rhythm, left and right and left and right, focusing on how it feels different on metal versus skin. Better on the metal.

After washing his hands, Steve leans with his palms behind him on the sink, looking at Bucky in a lazy, appraising way, head to one side, mouth soft.

Bucky puts the soap down and says, “Hey, you should hold me under the water.”

“Yeah?” Steve’s hands clench around the counter. An old tell; he likes that idea. “Maybe later.”

“What part of my body do you think you’d hold me down by?”

“I don’t know. Could you stay under if I just held you down by the dick?”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “What do you think?”

“I think you would try as hard as you could. But it might not be much fun.”

He comes and crouches by the bathtub, next to Bucky’s head, and Bucky scrunches himself against that side of the tub, stretching his neck toward potential touch. Steve scratches him behind the ear and earns a slow double-blink. He moves one stupidly sprawling hand to the top of Bucky’s head and holds his nose closed for him with the other. He waits.

Bucky smiles.

Steve pushes his head beneath the water, and Bucky makes sure to let some get in his mouth. Mint Epsom salts don’t taste amazing, but he’ll taste any kind of Epsom salts for Steve. Too fast, Steve is pulling him up.

He’s laughing at him through his nose, but he holds a hand under Bucky’s mouth so Bucky can spit out the bathwater.

Bucky spits and frowns. “Why are you teasing me?”

Drying his hand on his jeans, Steve says, “Now, sweetheart, what kind of precedent would it set if I gave you everything you wanted?”

“Hate to break it to you, but you set that precedent a long time ago.”

Steve bites his lip and averts his eyes for a second. “Shut up.” He smacks Bucky on the chest. He kisses him on the cheek.

As he’s getting up to leave, to return to his e-mails, Bucky says, “You can come in whenever you like. When I’m like this. To talk. It doesn’t have to be bladder-related.”

“I can, or you’d like that?”

“You know I mean them the same, idiot.”

“Yeah, I know you do.”

 

 

-

 

 

The first time in decades that he sat at Steve’s feet was not long after he used one of his burners to call the number written on his arm for months and say, “I’m done hiding from you, okay? I’ll tell you where you can find me. I promise it’s not a trick.”

At first, Steve showed up in that small Oregon town and it went all wrong. They circled each other like uncertain tigers. They got separate motel rooms with adjoining walls and both stayed awake all night, each listening in on the other’s creaking bed, footsteps, TV usage, coffee-guzzling.

This went on a second night, after a day full of halting conversation and friendly, brisk touches followed by panicked glances.

The third night, Bucky decided that he’d spent too long getting his head back on straight to let Steve’s presence undo his relatively healthy sleep habits. Before they got to the front desk of the next motel they were living out of while dealing with the fact that they didn’t have a real plan for what to do next, Bucky said, “We should just get one room.” Then he disappeared to learn the motel’s layout.

Things got easier. Bucky fell asleep listening to Steve reading that night, and when he woke up, Steve was asleep in the other bed, burrowed under the covers despite being fully dressed down to his shoes. With sleep in their bodies, they both seemed to settle, and to remember that they were here because they actually liked each other, and wanted to share things with each other, and didn’t have to be afraid.

One morning, Bucky walked into their room with a carryout tray of breakfast sandwiches and coffee, and Steve was sitting on the unmade bed, legs hung over the sides. His face was like he was trying to swallow a model plane whole. And like maybe, recently, he’d been crying.  

Bucky went to him, and slid onto the floor, keeping the tray within arm’s distance. He kneeled, though messily, right leg more thrown to the side than tucked under him, and he wrapped his right hand around Steve’s calf and squinted up at him with a small smile.

Meeting his eyes, Steve turned his head to the side and let his mouth hang open in a casual show of too-white teeth.

Emotional muscle memory took hold. Calm spread up Bucky’s torso and into his shoulders like he’d been hollowed out in anticipation of its arrival. Not cold calm; not warm calm; a perfectly room-temperature calm, the most normal thing imaginable.

With a tentative touch to the helix of Bucky’s ear, Steve said, “Buck, you don’t hafta—” It was hard to read, from the pause, if he thought this was some implausibly domestic Winter Soldier programming, or if he only, once again, found himself in the long-ago space of not knowing how to define how they were with each other. 

Either way, Bucky’s response was the same.

He slid his hand up Steve’s calf to his knee, and straightened his posture. He said, “I remember you, Steve. I remember this. I know what I’m doing. Stop me if you want, all right? But I do know what I’m doing.”

Tonight, he’s not kneeling, even messily. He’s sitting pretzel-style, slouched against the couch cushions, shoulder bumping Steve’s thigh. On his phone, he’s got several tabs of different electronic supply stores open, and some Craigslist ads for free scraps of junk. His arm hasn’t acted up yet, not in two years, but periodically, he’ll be assailed with thoughts of the thing wracked with spasms and sparks, or becoming dead weight, heavy and useless and unavoidable as an albatross. He’s read the schematics in the leaked SHIELD files. He has a good idea what kind of items he’d need to repair himself. It’s comforting to look at them online. To know they’re real and accessible.

 And to look at all the other shit people sell.

“Steve. Steve. Steve!”

A hand fists in his hair, silencing him. “Relax,” Steve says, sounding amused. “I was distracted. What?”

“This guy in Park Slope is selling a Pac Man machine for fifteen bucks. That’s the deal of a lifetime.”

“I gotta say I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s a big computer. A fucking ugly, big computer. You put quarters in and ghosts try to eat you, I guess. It’s a game.”

“ _Ghosts_ try to eat you?”

“Of course. But sometimes you can eat the ghosts.” He spent about a week last year hiding out in an arcade. It was a particularly bad week to live with his brain, and the cartoon characters and plastic guns helped.

 “Is this like a PlayStation?”

“I don’t know. You’re a big yellow circle and you eat dots, and then, if you get lucky, you can take revenge on the ghosts and you eat them too.” Steve is staring at him the way Bucky stared at the exhibit in the Smithsonian about the moon landing. “If that’s what a PlayStation is? Yes.”

“I don’t think it is. Sam has a PlayStation and he’s never mentioned eating ghosts. He made me play Mario Kart.”

“Maybe he’s keeping secrets from you.” Bucky shakes his head in Steve’s grip, and Steve makes a throaty sound like he forgot his hand was there, then shakes Bucky’s head more for him, and Bucky closes his eyes, absorbed, momentarily, in pleasant pliability.

“Speaking of eating ghosts,” Steve says, letting go.

“Anyone ever tell you your segues are godawful?”

“You don’t even know what I’m about to say.”

“I don’t think you’re gonna talk about eating ghosts, so I’m right.” Bucky slips his phone into the kangaroo pouch on his sweatshirt and shifts into a kneel, putting his elbows on Steve’s knees and his chin in his cupped hands. He smiles and hopes that he doesn’t come across like a chimp showing aggression.

“Hmm. Speaking of eating ghosts. You eaten dinner?”

“No.”

 “I’ll heat us up some soup. We have Italian Wedding. The lap of luxury.”

“Golly. Being a swell is even better than I imagined.” Steve taps him on the nose with one finger, and Bucky goes cross-eyed following the motion. “I can set the table.”

“What a helpful young man. A credit to your country.” Bucky bites his lip. “Come on. Stand.”

He does, unnecessarily putting his hands on Steve’s thighs and pushing himself up that way. He turns to walk to the kitchen and Steve stops him by grabbing his left elbow.

“Hang on there. Who told you to leave?”

“Oh. You didn’t, did you?”

“Nope. Stand right there.” Steve gets off the couch, and now he’s the one kneeling. Bucky isn’t sure how it feels for Steve when Bucky kneels in front of him, but probably it’s different. Seeing Steve on his knees makes him feel small and trembling, like a deer preyed upon by an eagle.

With a few deft motions, Steve knots together Bucky’s left and right bootlaces. He flourishes his hands, ta-da, then stands up. He puts one hand on his hip to examine his work.

Bucky examines it too. There’s very little slack between the boots. He experimentally lifts and lowers each toe, enjoying how the laces pull. “You tied my shoes together.” Nostalgia creeps up his throat like a nicer version of his near-constant acid reflux.

“How’d your private eye career never get off the ground?”

“At least you gave up on trying to be sneaky about it, I suppose.”

“I was never trying to be sneaky.”

“Oh, come on, Steve. Just because you weren’t good at sneaking—”

“It’s true.” Steve licks his lips, and narrows his eyes at the boots. “I liked to watch you pretending you didn’t know. I liked that you let yourself trip.”

“Oh.” If his younger self knew that, he would be mortified. He is mortified right now. His face is hot and he wants nothing more than to cry joyfully into Steve’s hair. “Can you believe I’m legendary for being subtle?”

“Not even a little bit. I can smell your hair products from anywhere in the house.”

The punch he aims at Steve’s arm is gentle despite coming from the left fist. Steve rubs his arm anyway with a mock-wounded frown.

“What hair products? I don’t put product in my hair anymore.”

“Then I’m still smelling your hair products from decades ago. That’s how strong they were.”

Bucky makes sure to telegraph his next punch so that Steve will grab his wrist from the air. His grip is tight, much tighter than he would dare grip bone, and Bucky’s insides liquefy.

Like he doesn’t know the effect he’s having, Steve turns to look at the doorway when he says, “So, pretty boy.”

“What?”

“You were walking to the kitchen. Remember?” He drops Bucky’s wrist and points the way, nodding for emphasis.

“And my shoes are staying this way?”

“If you don’t want me ticked off.”

“That’s a stumper.”

Steve sighs. Lips to Bucky’s ear, body heat to body heat, he whispers, “You don’t want me ticked off.”

Nothing’s better than taking the opportunity to turn his face and kiss Steve’s chin, licking at it, a breathy giggle trapped fluttering around in his mouth. “Fucking baloney I don’t,” he says, but when Steve steps away, he does shuffle after him in his tied-together boots.

Because he doesn’t really _need_ Steve to be mad when Steve’s idea of sweet affection is trying to make him fall on his face.

“Faster, Buck,” Steve calls over his shoulder. “I’m starving. If we don’t get soup soon, I might pass out.” He stops at the doorway and leans on the frame, arms crossed, watching.

Skirting around the indirect order to fall over right now, Bucky hops forward. Once, twice, three hops. Feet together. Light landings.

“Think of the downstairs neighbors!” Steve’s hand flies to his chest.

Bucky rolls his eyes. No point in pointing out that he wasn’t making any noise. “You want a fainting couch there, Scarlett O’Hara?”

“No, but I’ll buy one for you if you ask nicely.”  

Need spikes through him. It makes him stand up straighter. “Oh. That’s good to know.”

“Walk faster, Buck. This is no time for laziness. How can you set the table if you’re dawdling in here?” 

“I’m sorry. I’ll be right there.” Like stepping onto a roller coaster, like jumping out of a plane, like diving into the Hudson when the summer sun’s begun raising freckles on his arms, that same kind of warmth and love for life suffusing him, he takes a few quicker, larger steps, and trips.

Before he can hit the ground, Steve is there, his hands under Bucky’s armpits, tugging him toward himself, cackling hysterically. “Bucky! You’re supposed to break your fall, not break your nose. Your shoes are tied, not your hands.”

“Why would I break my fall? I knew you were gonna catch me.” And he has the reflexes to have rolled safely onto his back if necessary, but that’s irrelevant.  

Steve shifts his jaw around, mouth turned up on the left side, and ducks his head. He says, “Fine. The chances were _high_ that I was _intending_ to catch you. What if I shoved you on the floor right now?”

“That would be nice. Do you want me to break my fall this time?” He kisses the top of Steve’s ducked head, and Steve shifts him into a more solid standing position.

“I’ll have to think about that. Now enough with the schmaltz. We really should eat.” He bites down hard on the meat of Bucky’s cheek, and Bucky yelps, and starts cackling too.

 

 

-

 

 

“I’m worrying.” Bucky’s been in the bath for eleven minutes. Five minutes ago, Steve wandered in and sat on the floor, back tucked into the space where the tub and the wall melt into each other, one hand dipped in the hot water, swirling it around. He looks away from the water and up at Bucky’s face when he says this, and firms his lips into a thin line when he’s done.  
  
Bucky rolls his head lazily along the wall. “Stop the presses.”

Steve scoots forward so that he can force his thumb into Bucky’s mouth, between his teeth. “Hush. Let me finish.” Bucky holds his mouth open wide around Steve’s thumb instead of biting down, and he gets a smile, which turns, well, it’s hard to say. Melancholy? Haunted? Some other useless word? Steve pulls his thumb out and wipes it on Bucky’s cheek even though it’s barely wet.

“I’m worrying about that.”  
  
“My saliva?”

“Hush _._ Or don’t. I think that’s my point. Don’t. I’m worrying about doing something wrong here, Buck. It doesn’t mean nothing anymore for me to stick something in your mouth to shut you up.”

“It never meant nothing. Why bother if it meant nothing?”

“I know. I’m sorry. But it doesn’t necessarily mean anything harmless. How do I know I won’t scare you?”

“That’s easy. If you scared me, I would have bitten your thumb off.”

Steve laughs. “You sure about that? You bite off a lot of Hydra body parts?”

“A few. But every time, two more took their place. Come here. You ever wanted six fingers? I’ve got the special bite.” He gnashes his teeth and growls to see Steve laugh again. He gets his wish.

Steve grazes, with crooked fingers, the plane of his right knee where it breaks the surface of the water. “I’m sorry. We should talk about this when you’re done here.”

“When I’ve got clothes on?”

“If you want. But I mean when you’re not supposed to be relaxing.”

“Oh, I’m supposed to be relaxing? Is that an order?” Steve opens his mouth but doesn’t say anything. Bucky resists the urge to squeeze his eyes shut with regret at his timing. “Sorry. Never mind. Not an order. Not an order until you believe it’s okay for it to be an order, right?”

Steve swallows. His whole-body stiffness eases. It occurs to Bucky that maybe he sounded combative at first when he asked if it was an order. He isn’t very good at modulating his tone these days. “No,” Steve says. “It’s an order. Relax in here. I’ll be in the living room when you want to find me.”

He kisses Bucky on the mouth. He leaves.

Bucky wasn’t kidding about having bitten off some body parts. As far as he knows, no new parts ever took their place. Though maybe they were remade in metal.

It’s tempting to cut the bath short, but he does want to follow Steve’s order. And the fact that he was fine calling it an order at all soothes Bucky’s nerves about how talking might go. Steve spends a lot of his time worrying. He spends almost none of his time drastically changing his mind.

Safe inside that ratio, Bucky lets himself unspool with the heat, taking his time with the bar soap, with the conditioner, with closing his eyes when he needs to and counting his breaths.

He comes to Steve in boxers and a soft blue sweatshirt, his hair combed and squeezed and patted dry and tucked behind his ears, his face scrubbed red. Steve is reading a magazine on the couch, his hair rucked up like he’s been running his hands through it. Tension rides close to the surface in his shoulders, and his posture is troublingly pristine.

Bucky isn’t sure how to act in this context, how much of how they are with each other is encompassed within what’s bothering Steve. He doesn’t think sitting down next to him on the couch is going to reassure him that everything is normal and fine, but getting on the floor is maybe inconsiderate.

He settles for going down on one knee in front of him. Not a proposal. A knight awaiting an honor. Steve loves that Arthurian shit. Bucky loves that Arthurian shit too.    

He says, “Throw it at me. What’s the hubbub?”

Steve looks up from his magazine and raises one eyebrow. “You going to Mass?”

“Fuck you. You know what I’m doing.”

Steve sets the magazine to the side.  

“Maybe I do.” He puts his thumb over the cleft in Bucky’s chin, other fingers curled under his jaw. Not nearly tight enough to restrict the movement of his mouth. Quiet affection. He’s looking at Bucky like he’s looking _into_ him, and Bucky bites his lip.

“This okay? I can get up if it’s making you more worried.”  
  
“If it’s your idea, I’m not worried.” He swipes his finger over Bucky’s lips. Transfers the hand to his metal shoulder. “And as long as we’re pouring our hearts out? I love this.”  
  
“Fair enough.” He tucks that information away, then waits. This isn’t his rodeo. He isn’t going to try to guess what Steve’s worries are.

Steve says, “I want to know that you’re okay.”

“I’m okay.”

Steve side-eyes him. Bucky rolls his eyes.

“What? Are we talking in general now? I thought you had a specific concern.”

Steve nudges at Bucky’s vertical shin with the toe of his sneaker. “I’m worried about doing anything that feels too.” He roots around for the right word, then pronounces it carefully: “ _Familiar._ And don’t start yakking about, ‘Of course it’ll feel familiar, lunkhead. It’ll feel like it’s nineteen-goddamn-forty-one.’”

He does a radio announcer voice to mimic Bucky; he always has, and it’s always made Bucky grin. He’s no longer lightheaded over the idea that Steve might think of him as some smooth, sophisticated big-shot, but it’s cute. It’s cute and it’s sweet.   

Bucky ducks his head until his smile is more under control. When he looks up, he says, “I’m not gonna start yakking. I like that you care. But you don’t need to worry. If you worry the exact amount you did when it was ‘nineteen-goddamn-forty-one,’ we’ll be just fine.”

“Really? You’re telling me there’s no reason you might be more sensitive now? You—” He stops himself, clenching his jaw. Bucky can fill in the blanks. _You insisted the shower have low water pressure. You sleep on a dining room table. You get twitchy about seeing certain cars on the street._ On and on, things he knows Bucky won’t want said aloud.

But he gets what Steve’s saying. Of course he needs reassurance. “If something upsets me, we’ll know. And we’ll stop. You’ve always been careful like a hawk. And you’ve never broken my bones because I tried to fight you on something. If something starts fucking me up, I promise to fight you on it.”

“Oh, I won’t break your bones. Your standards are flattering.”

They don’t need to talk, right now, about how many times Bucky’s jerked off over the years to the thought of Steve stomping on his hands. Steve knows.

“Look, if all you’re fine with is necking, ordering me to relax, and letting me go down on one knee for you. Then that’s what we’ll do. But don’t tell me what my comfort levels are.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, and puts his thumb on Bucky’s chin again. Bucky tilts his head to kiss it. “But if I do repeatedly make you feel unsafe—”

“Then I must have different comfort levels than I think. And we’ll reevaluate.” He takes Steve’s thumb into his mouth. He flicks his tongue over the tip. He lets it go. “But I don’t think it works that way for me. Hurting. It’s context-dependent. I’m like a chameleon if a chameleon wanted your hands in its mouth.” 

Steve chokes on an obvious laugh, forcing himself to look serious. He puts his hand on his thigh. “That sounds like you’re just blending in to match what I expect.”

“If a chameleon _wanted_ your hands in its mouth, Steve. Wanted. So my simile isn’t perfect. You know what I’m saying.”  
  
“Spell it out for me.”

“Steve. It’s good when things are good. And it’s bad when things are bad. That’s how it works for me.”

Steve takes a shaky inhalation. His voice, though, is steady when he says, “So you’ve never been eloquent a day in your life there, have you, buddy?”

“Do I got to have been?”

“Nope. You can say whatever dumb shit you like.” He tilts Bucky’s chin up, so they can make the kind of intense eye contact Steve likes so much when trying to imbue a moment with meaning. “You can say dumb shit on purpose. You can do it on accident. You can make me decode charades. You can make me learn a new language. I’ll take any of it, I promise. Anything you’ve got to tell me.”

And that’s good. That’s yes. “Then let me show you all those ways how bad I want it. Because I do.” He puts his raised knee down on the floor. He shuffles closer so they’re pressed together. “Let me show you in fucking morse code. Let me show you with semaphore flags.”

Steve starts tapping Bucky’s cheek. Long and short, he spells out, _Good boy_ , and Bucky hides his face in Steve’s thighs, burrowing into them, not exactly shaking his head “no” but not going easily into the praise. Steve takes a moment, smoothing his hand over the exposed back of Bucky’s neck, then comes to a conclusion. He taps, there, on his neck, _My adequate boy._

Bucky shudders, barely not moaning. He taps on the outside of Steve’s thigh, _Thank you_. He follows it up with, _I want you to fist me into the floor._ If it’s Bucky’s idea, then Steve won’t worry. Bucky can give him years of ideas to be worry-free about.  

Steve makes a delighted _hmm_ before saying, out loud this time, “I can do that. Soon. With preparation.”

He parts his thighs so that Bucky’s head has nothing to rest on anymore, and forces him down with the hand around his neck. Bucky’s in a tight curl now, kneeling with his forehead on the floor, and he turns his head to the side and wraps his arm around Steve’s ankle. He rearranges himself until his cheek rests on top of Steve’s sneaker.

“Well,” he says, “know I’ll be counting the seconds.”

He closes his eyes. Steve ruffles his hair. Steve says, “Noted.”

After a while of that, he pulls Bucky up by the shirt collar and they make out on the couch.

Thank god that _Be with Steve_ is blocked out for right now on his index card.

 

 

-

 

 

Pause.

It’s 7:12 p.m. For the past couple hours, Steve has been holed up in his room, moving across the floor approximately every eleven minutes, sometimes speaking aloud to himself. Bucky avoids eavesdropping, these days, by pretending he can speak every language except English, or, when the timing is lucky, by drowning Steve out with the TV. Which he was doing, from 7:00 to 7:12, but now the show is paused, and his attention is on Steve, who’s perched on the arm of the couch, chin raised, his sneakers dirtying the cushion to Bucky’s right.

Still holding the clicker, Bucky says, “Doing okay there?”

Steve holds up a finger. “One question. If that’s fine right now,” and Bucky snorts and slides closer, so that he’s sitting on Steve’s sneakers.

“This episode has _alternate universes_. It’s a very compelling plot formulation.”

“Is that a no?” He wedges his sneakers further under Bucky’s thigh.

“It’s not a no. Just sharing. But if this question turns into twenty questions, you better be planning to beat me up after.” Not as in right after. At an appropriate point in his schedule. 

Steve smiles and flicks him on the right bicep. “I’m always planning to beat you up. It’s hard not to beat you up every moment of the day.”

Bucky pictures himself literally swooning. “Sweet-talker. What’s your one question?”

“Do you want me to not be nice to you?” 

In a different context, it would sound like the best kind of threat, but instead, it comes out earnest and practical. Like he’s asking if Bucky wants to borrow his book when he’s done.

“What, like do I want you to throw the TV out the window and stop buying fresh produce?”

“No _._ The other day, I called you good. You tensed up. So I need to know, do you need me to not be nice to you like that?”

 “Oh. But then you called me ‘adequate.’ I liked that.”

Steve smiles. “I could tell. So that’s the nicest I should be?”

“No.” He puts his left hand on his face, holding his eyelid shut. “That’s not it. You can be nice to me. Not all the time. Not _most_ of the time. Don’t go crazy.”

“Don’t know how I’d manage.”

“Well, you are already crazy.”

“It takes two to be crazy.”

“All right, so, that’s not true, but moving on: you should say _some_ nice things. But. I’ll be weird about it. I can’t help it.”

“You sure you want me to, then?”

“I’m sure. Just let me pretend I’m not sure. I want you to say nice things and I want to let myself hate it. So only do it when you’re okay with me responding like I hate it.”

Steve’s gaze is so intent that Bucky forces himself to take his hand off of his face so he can be looked at in full, drunk in all the way. Always, he wishes he could give himself up like this; always, he wants Steve to consume him.

“Okay, Buck,” Steve says. “But if I fuck that up, you have to tell me. However you can.”

“I’m very communicative. Now let me finish my show.” He raps Steve’s ankle with the clicker and gets off of his shoes, retreating to where he was sitting before.

“You’re communic _able_. Like rabies.”

Steve doesn’t get up; he stretches his legs out so he can rest his sneakers on top of Bucky’s thigh now, and Bucky says, “Ugh,” and bangs his forehead on Steve’s knee, anchoring himself with his right arm under Steve’s warm calves. He looks up at Steve, whose mouth is open, whose eyes are bright, and he says, “I’m very fond of you.”

He immediately worries that it’ll come across like a test, like he’s checking to make sure Steve won’t go crazy saying nice things to him, even when prompted with something like that. But Steve doesn’t look like he’s being tested at all, and Steve’s usual way of looking is like he’s being tested by God and life as a whole.

Steve says, “I love you,” and stands up. Over his shoulder, on his way into the kitchen, he adds, “I don’t mind if you pretend you hate that. I can see through you.”

There’s no alternate universe, Bucky thinks, where they can’t see through each other. He presses play.  

 

 

-

 

 

They’re out of orange juice. Steve likes it fresh-squeezed and Bucky likes it from Concentrate, so they keep both in the fridge, but they’re out of both. This time-slot is for _Practice spontaneity._ His spontaneous idea was to go get a glass of orange juice.

He checks the microwave clock. There’s time to get to the bodega for orange juice, but now that this is turning into a planned trip, is it spontaneous anymore? He’s still standing in the light of the open icebox door. He repeats his scan of the shelves. There’s definitely no orange juice. As he was checking the microwave clock, Steve came up behind him, and has been waiting silently since.

Bucky closes the icebox and turns around.

“Did you finish my orange juice?”

Steve wrinkles his nose and points at the fridge for some reason. “No. I assume _you_ finished your orange juice.”

That makes more sense. “Oh. Yeah. That makes more sense.” His right hand twitches against the door handle. “Sorry.”

“I’ll find it in my heart to forgive you.” This is his first time getting a good glance at Steve today. His eyebrow hairs are in disarray, and he’s wearing a sleeveless black shirt that Bucky didn’t know he owned. He’s looking warm—kind of glowy, but also imbued with alertness and aliveness, like maybe he went outside for a reason other than his perfunctory pre-dawn run.

He’s gorgeous _._ Bucky wants to be wrapped up in him. For Steve to maybe grope him and talk some shit. It’s another spontaneous, if unoriginal, idea.

Just as the icebox was empty of orange juice, Steve could be empty of, well, interest or desire or something along those poorly constructed metaphorical lines, in which case Bucky will need to have a third original idea, and note in his journal that he exerted an impressive amount of effort today. But there’s no harm in giving the Steve idea his all.

He says, “You look breathless.”

“Well, my asthma’s acting up.” Steve steps into his space, kissing him on the cheek as he nudges Bucky out of the way so he can open the icebox. Between them, they’re really letting out the cold.

“Ha. Ha. No. You look like you did something.”

“Someone’s suspicious. I was reading on the fire escape.” His rummaging ends with him triumphantly holding a wax-paper-wrapped stack of roast beef from the deli. “There’s a nice breeze. You can join me if you want.”

“I. Can’t.” That’s not spontaneous, not if he’s invited, and besides, it would bleed into his next block of time.

Steve peers at him over imaginary librarian glasses. “If you’re sure.”

“I am. I’m sorry.” He hates not being able to explain avoidances like that to Steve. _Oh, I’m a robot and my programming doesn’t allow me to hang out with you on the fire escape because it exceeds my delineated window of spontaneity_ isn’t an option _._ Steve thinks he’s a person, and that’s a fragile, beautiful soap bubble of a thing. “You can join me here. If _you_ want. Just for a little while.” 

“Oh, can I?” Steve unwraps the roast beef and sticks a slice in his mouth. Bucky hates that. The fucking heathen’s always eating ingredients like they’re entire foods.

Through a mouthful of beef, Steve says, “What’s on the agenda?”

“My body. You and my body. If you want right now.”

“Sounds promising. Are you invited too?”

“I’ll be there to chaperone. You know how handsy these things can get.”  

Steve stuffs more roast beef into his gob. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Yeah, you’re supposed to leave room for the Holy Spirit. Or so I’ve been told.”

“Oh.” Throwing the lunch meat underhanded and perfectly onto the nearby counter, Steve sidles much, much closer. “So is this not what I’m supposed to do?”

“This should be allowed. I think I can still see the Holy Spirit sticking his nose in right there.”

“How’s this?” Steve smushes his whole self against Bucky’s front, pressing Bucky’s back to the icebox. An assortment of magnets—free from nonprofit organizations or housewarming gifts from Sam—dig into his spine, the flesh of his hips, and he moans even though he isn’t really feeling it yet. Just to emphasize,

“Yeah, this is more the delinquency I was imagining. Who’s the Holy Spirit anyway?”

“I’m not getting into that with you right now.” Steve lowers his mouth to Bucky’s neck and sets about sucking an obscenely large hickey there. Bucky moans again, more out of necessity this time, and wriggles into the implacable force of Steve’s body.

“Fuck. Were you a mosquito in a past life?”

 Steve unlatches his mouth. “You a whiny little ungrateful shit in a past life?”

“Why look to the past? I’m whiny right here.”

Steve tsks and trails a finger along the mark he’s made. “This is huge. You won’t be able to step outside for the next couple weeks without everyone knowing what a lascivious, owned little slut you are.”

“Oh, ‘lascivious.’ That’s nice.”

“I bought one of those word-of-the-day calendars. I thought dirty talking would be more fun if you don’t know what I’m saying.”

“I like that idea. You should do that for real, y’know. I’ll be real intimidated by all your book learning.”  
  
Steve thumbs hard at the hickey and Bucky’s mouth falls open, working wordlessly. “Calendar learning. Keep up.”

He says, “Will do,” just to hear the floaty strain in his own voice. To let Steve hear it too. In response, Steve carefully spins Bucky around. A bumpy magnet in the shape of a Coca Cola bottle gets personal with his crotch.

“What were you doing when I interrupted? I’m not keeping you from eating, am I?”

“Was looking for orange juice. I told you when you came in.”

Steve cuffs him on the back of the head. “No, you just asked if I finished your orange juice. Don’t get smart. You’re not good at it.”

“Didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, sure.” Steve kicks his legs apart. Not, as far as Bucky can tell, for any functional purpose. Just for the thrill of Bucky letting himself be kicked. “What am I going to do with you?”

“Shoot the breeze? Take me to a game?”

Instead of scolding him for being smart again, Steve breathes through his nose the way he does when he doesn’t want Bucky to know he’s hilarious.

“Hmm. I know. While I have you here, let’s revisit this fisting you into the floor concept. Did you need my hand up your hole so I can put on a puppet show, or were you looking to get skull-fucked until you’re drooling all over your face? There’s no wrong answer.”

The words have a rehearsed sound, but in a heartwarming way. How he always sounds when he’s too passionate about something to risk having to take a lot of long pauses while he gets his thoughts organized. Decidedly the opposite of how he sounds in the movies.

“You mean no right answer. Why’re you giving me a swelled head?”

“I thought it would be funny to pop your swelled head with a pin. But I can roll with the punches. Fine. No right answer. Whatever you tell me, I’ll mock you mercilessly for it. How’s that?”

“It’s good. I’m partial to it.”

“Then you better answer. I can’t mock you if you don’t.”  

Probably Steve can’t fit his whole fist in Bucky’s mouth, let alone maneuver it down his throat. That means that if they go that route, Steve gets to be sweetly, bitingly disappointed in him. Bucky gets to really be forced, and Steve can talk about the puppet show thing more if he wants, and Bucky won’t be able to talk back. Thinking about it is getting him hard and desperate.

“I want you to skull-fuck me. It’s such a fucked up word.”

“It’s turning you on.”

“Well, obviously.”

“Look at you. Such a filthy little freak. Popping wood over the thought of me prying your mouth open with my fist. You’ll start gagging, but I won’t pull out. I’ll just sit there with you writhing on the end of my arm, drooling and crying and panting around me. That’s what you want, you fucking revolting dog biscuit?” Bucky laughs, and Steve coos, “You want to lick the grime out from under my fingernails?”  

One nice thing about Steve is that he would never break a promise to mock someone.

“Yeah, babe. I do. I want to be your fucking nail brush.” His hips jerk against the Coca Cola magnet as he’s saying it. All the atoms in his body buzz with need.  

Steve shuffles them backward so that Bucky’s hips can only jerk helplessly into empty air. “Aw, sweetheart. Desperate little cumfactory, aren’t you?”

Bucky huffs another laugh and brings his metal arm up between them to cup the side of Steve’s head, and rubs their necks together as much as possible, stroking his head along Steve’s face. Steve grabs Bucky’s errant wrist and twists it to the small of his back, keeping it locked in his fist.

“Sorry,” Bucky pants. “It’s hard not to touch you.”

“Well, it’s hard _to_ touch you. My skin crawls just thinking about it.”

“Sorry.”

“I know you can’t help it. It’s how you’ve always been.” He makes his voice sickly-sweet, his breath hot on Bucky’s neck. “A disgusting little bitch with a face made for radio.”

Bucky bites the inside of his cheek, his eyelids fluttering of their own accord. “You’ve got me pegged.” He swallows. “Can I get on my knees?”

“Sure.”

He starts to drop down, but Steve doesn’t let go of his wrist, so his shoulder pulls painfully and he has to stop himself, hissing. Straightening all the way up isn’t an option, though; Steve’s got a new grip on his hip and is holding him still in his bent, off-kilter shape.

“Darling.”  A glob of spit lands casually at the base of his neck. “You need to learn some patience.”

“Sorry,” Bucky whispers.

“What was that?”

“I’m sorry, you hypocritical asshole.” His voice is clear and loud this time.

“Really?” Steve spits on him in the exact same spot as before. Bucky’s proud of how much Steve’s aim has improved.

“I’m really sorry, Steve.”

“There we go. What I was saying, before you started chomping at the bit, is that you can get on your knees once you thank me for touching you even though it makes my dick shrivel up to even get a glimpse of you from three blocks away.” He shakes him by the wrist and hip. It isn’t very effective, leverage-wise, but being shaken while bent and held makes him heat all over.

 

Bucky told him, a few days ago, lying on his side on the floor with a notebook in front of him and Steve’s foot on his hip while Steve worked on a cartoon he was drawing up on the couch, “Hey, if you ask me to be grateful that you’re touching me, just don’t say you’re being nice, all right? You can say you’re being nice to touch me or you can tell me to thank you, but you can’t do both.”

He stared at his metal hand arching on the hardwood as he spoke. It was much more elegant than his tumbling, urgent voice.

Steve dug his heel into Bucky’s hip. “Can you look at me?”

“I can try.” He rolled over so that Steve’s foot ended up on his stomach, and Steve lowered his other foot from where it was bent up on the couch to rest there too. It took Bucky more effort to breathe under that weight, and that made his lungs feel more real.   

He flicked his eyes up to Steve, who now had his elbows on his thighs, the corners of his mouth tugging down.

Bucky raised and lowered his eyebrows at him quick to communicate, _Hey, don’t overreact._

Steve asked, “Did I do that recently?”

“No.” Steve’s face slackened with relief, though he continued to stare at Bucky, level, hearing him out. “You used to. I was thinking about it.”

“You didn’t like it?”

“I did. I wouldn’t now. I still promise to fight you on anything, but why not pre-empt you instead when I can?”

“Well.” Steve smiled at him and kicked gently at his soft dick, barely protected by his sweats. Bucky cringed, then smoothed out and returned the smile, toothy. Steve put on his most Important voice. “Thank you for being of perfectly average intelligence and exhibiting the bare minimum of responsibility that I would expect from any fellow citizen.”  

“Oh, you betcha.”  
  
Bucky sat up to grab one of Steve’s ankles and kiss the jutting bone.

 

“Thank you.” Bucky’s surprised by the hoarseness of his own voice. Steve gives him another shake. An order: Elaborate _._ “Thanks, Steve. Thanks for touching me. I know it’s really hard for you to touch me, so. So thank you. For putting in the effort. For your—” He casts around for the right label. For what this is, that Steve is giving him. Not niceness _._ Something larger.

Steve tightens his grip on Bucky’s hip, middle and ring fingers pushing into the soft bowl of his pelvis, sending sore shocks through his stomach and into his dick. Bucky licks his lips. His next words are halting, breathy, punched out of his chest.

“For your service. Thank you. Thank you for how when. You see a need, you fill it. You fill me. I’m needy. Please let me kneel, Steve. Christ, I can’t think straight.”

Suddenly, Bucky’s held up only by his own dwindling willpower and Steve’s hand around his wrist. With the hand that was on his hip, Steve claws at his right thigh. Bucky yelps. He can feel the redness, how he’ll be scored there for the rest of the day.

Steve hums a few cheerful notes to himself. “Okay.” He lets go of Bucky’s wrist, forcing him to the floor with a hand on each shoulder before he can tip forward.

Kneeling now, facing away from Steve, with his calves half between Steve’s spread legs, he feels anchored. A hand cards through his hair, tugging without pain, teasing. Steve says, “I suppose you could have done worse,” and tugs painfully this time, yanking Bucky’s neck with the motion so he makes a kittenish noise of shock.

Steve rubs his fingers in a soothing circle over his temple. “My adequate boy.” Voice low. Touch firm.  

 

 

-

 

 

_11:00 a.m.-12:3 0 p.m. Be somewhere besides apartment._ Sometimes he does this alone, and sometimes he invites Steve along with a casual, “We should check out that snazzy ramen joint down the street,” or, “There’s a mural I want you to see.” Steve never says no, always looking, when asked, like he’s just been let out of jail.

This makes Bucky feel guilty about not asking more often, but he can’t. If he draws too much attention to his leaving, he risks drawing attention to the regularity of his timing, which risks making Steve suspicious, and maybe, in his suspicion, he’ll go through Bucky’s pockets and find, folded up—

Steve wouldn’t. Bucky _does_ know that. He _knows_ , intellectually a lot of things.

But Steve should probably still get out more, not only to run or get groceries when someone calls him up and says they need Captain America. So Bucky takes to sticking flyers on the fridge for events that Steve might like that Bucky wouldn’t. Tries to nudge him to stop acting as his own warden.

This time, he slips out alone. If Steve notices he’s gone, well, he’s got his phone in his pocket. Steve kept making a point, when they first moved in, of telling Bucky that he didn’t have to account for his whereabouts. He could leave the house as he liked, without always checking in.

Bucky believes that now. Mostly.

RECIPIENT: S.R.: _Can u tell Sam that this store has “bubble bars” shaped like flamingos?_

Something he’s been trying lately is not staring at the screen when he waits for a response. It still seems kind of rude, like walking away in the middle of a conversation, but he slips his phone into the inner pocket of his coat anyway.

Last week, he decided it might be a good idea to spend more time buying things for himself. Before the apartment, he had two changes of clothes, some composition books, bits of attractive trash he’d accumulated, and a go-bag of necessities. Buying things because he has the space for them and because it might be fun seems like a regular, person kind of thing to do.

The Bolsheviks in his head and the Steve in his head are both saddened by his willing submission to capitalist brainwashing. Like Steve doesn’t own an apparently endless array of leather jackets. 

So now he’s skulking around a store that claims to sell fancy bath products, mindful to keep his hood down, his facial expression pleasant, and both of his bright, knit gloves—purchased four days ago—on. He’s politely declined three separate offers of help, unwilling to admit that he has no idea what to make of the sherbert-colored soaps arranged like bakery displays.

His phone buzzes.

_I don’t know, can you tell him?_

_I don’t have his number._

Steve texts him Sam’s number, which Bucky already has. Bucky replies, _i don’t have his #._

_I’m going to wring your neck._ This time, he does stare at the screen to wait. Finally, _Fine. I told him._

He thumbs through the emoji keyboard, considering the hearts and the homes, but the homes are maybe too sappy. He texts Steve the heart with the arrow through it.

Steve responds, _Yeah, me too_. After putting his phone away, Bucky takes a moment to grin maniacally into the crook of his right elbow. His insides feel replaced with helium.

Another salesperson catches his eye and asks if he needs help.

Regretful, He lowers his arm. He hasn’t regained control over his facial muscles yet, but maybe that makes him seem more normal when he says, “Yeah, thank you. Are any of these good for anxiety?”

 

 

-

 

 

 

Steve comes up behind him and turns off the hot water. The tub is only filled an inch. “What gives?” Bucky asks him from the floor, where he’s in his boxers and nothing else.

 Steve sits on the edge of the tub, and pulls Bucky closer by the hair so their faces are about level. “I give, if you’re interested.”

Blending together two sequential schedule items isn’t something he does often, but _Sex with Steve_ is on his acceptable scheduling exceptions list, and technically, this isn’t even an exception, not if the bath is going to be part of it. He’ll have so much extra time for the bath and so much extra time for _Time with Steve_ and he doesn’t even have to feel guilty about his gluttony.

The bath might not serve its usual hygienic purpose, but the index card says to take a bath, not to get clean.

“Yes, I’m interested. I’m very interested.”

“That’s convenient. I was, obviously, only pretending to be interested in your opinion.”

“Obviously.” Bucky kisses his kneecap.

Steve says, “Hmm,” then puts a hand under each of Bucky’s arms and hauls him closer, so his legs are barely on the floor, most of his weight in Steve’s lap. Steve kisses him on the mouth, rough, fucking his tongue insistently between the tight of tunnel of Bucky’s teeth before Bucky’s brain catches up and he widens his mouth, making it a more pleasant space to invade.

At that, Steve stops. A string of drool connects their mouths when they part, and Bucky, dutifully, twirls it up with his tongue and swallows. Steve’s eyes crinkle at the corners. He kisses Bucky on the mouth once more, but gently now. No tongue. He puts him back on the floor.

“Get in the water for me.”

Bucky does, letting his boxers get soaked, as Steve stays balanced on the tub’s edge, watching him.  

“I think we’re going to multitask tonight, since you’ve been pretty tolerable today.”

This is one of those nights when that’s enough of a compliment that Bucky ducks his head and grinds his teeth. Which is acceptable to do. Which is acceptable to be happiest doing.

“Aw, are you blushing?”

“I don’t blush,” Bucky mutters.

“You don’t have to lie to me. I’m not gonna respect you either way.”

Who knows what facial expression Bucky really makes when he looks up and tries to sneer. The point is that Steve smacks him twice across each side of his face with barely any pause between hits.

“There. See? You do blush.”

A quick flurry of blinks. He catches his breath. “I can’t see it.” Though his face is hot and sensitive now, demanding more touch, and he’s fully hard. Steve looks smug.

“Let me help you with that.” Steve gets his phone out of his back pocket and opens the selfie camera before holding it up. Both his cheeks are, in fact, a light pink, at least for about the next minute. Bucky touches the button to take a picture. A gift Steve can enjoy later.

“Oh, great, now I have to _look_ at that,” Steve bitches as he pockets the phone. “You could have at least smiled.”

“Smiling is frowned upon under communist rule.”

That startles a laugh out of Steve, who smacks him across the face anyway. “Can we move on or you gonna give me more lip?”

“I mean. I don’t want to, but I’m pretty forgetful. It might slip out.”

“Oh, ‘forgetful?’ That’s a nice word for it. I would have said, ‘incompetent,’ but I guess we’re flattering ourselves today.”

 “You’re flattering me too. You implied that my smile is nice.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“Okay.” Bucky smiles at him, forcing the wideness of it at first, the shy lower lip bite, but it turns genuine pretty fast, on account of the way Steve is looking at him. Like he wants to shrink Bucky down and swallow him whole.

“Shit,” Steve says, slapping a hand over Bucky’s mouth. “I forgot what it looked like. That’s criminal.”

“I’m a criminal.” The hand completely muffles his voice, and the word “criminal” forces him to lick Steve’s palm twice.

“Disgusting.” Steve shakes his hand out, staring at it like it bit him. “What did you say?”

“I said I’m a criminal.” He smiles again. “You are too.”

“Yeah?” Steve wraps his hand around Bucky’s right upper arm, massaging his thumb deep into the triceps. It makes Bucky sleepier, laxer. Makes his stomach flutter. “We partners in crime?”

“Actually. You know what. I don’t think we’ve committed a crime together in a little while now. We should mug someone when we’re done here.”

“Oh, should we?”

“Fine, we’ll just vandalize something. Spoilsport.”

“Sure. You love mugging. You thought his hobbies including helping little old ladies across streets and getting emotional about television?” Steve asks an imaginary studio audience. “No, he’s James Buchannan Barnes, the notorious mugger!”

“Well, yeah. See:” Bucky bares his teeth at him. Sticks his tongue out. Grins. “Bring that camera back out.”

“Hilarious. Now where were we?”

“I think—”

Steve smacks him the hardest he has so far, and Bucky gasps at the noise before the bright burst of pain. He shuts his eyes, focusing in. A sharp flick to the edge of a zygomatic bone, where the skin is stinging, makes him open them.

“I remember.” Steve grins, letting himself have one mostly silent laugh. “We were multitasking. You want to know what that means?”

“Yeah. Please.” 

Patient and gentle like he’s talking to a child, Steve says, “Multitasking is when you do more than one thing simultaneously.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Oh.”

“I know that learning new things is hard, but you don’t have to be so petulant about it.” He smooths a finger over Bucky’s eyebrow. “I’ll put it on a flashcard for you, okay?”

“Oh, please do.” He knows Steve will for real. “But, Steve, can you tell me what, uh, ‘multitasking,’ means for us tonight?”

“Such an eager learner. You’d think you’d be less clueless.”

“I told you, I’m pretty forgetful. That’s why I need the flashcard.”

Steve sighs. “I better make you a whole deck.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. So multitasking, tonight, means that I’m going to alternate holding you underwater and fucking your mouth with my fist until you forget what it’s like to take a full breath without my permission. Doesn’t that sound fun?”

Bucky digs his nails into his right thigh. “Aren’t you only pretending to care about my opinion?” He thinks he sounds like he’s already drowning.

“Look at that. It can remember things.” Steve puts a hand on either side of Bucky’s sore, flushed face. A picture frame. “That’s one less flashcard I’ll have to make.”

“Oh. But can you?”  

The thought of owning a card that says, “What is Steve only pretending to care about?” on one side, and “Your opinion,” on the other makes him very aware of his heartbeat. That card, folded neatly, safe in his pocket alongside his schedule.

“You know, you’re a demanding little fuck for someone who doesn’t even know you’re supposed to take off your clothes to take a bath.” The hands cupping his face stay loose. It’s only when Bucky makes a move to pull down his boxers that Steve’s grip solidifies, and he forces Bucky’s face up toward his.

“No, hands off. You made your choice. The one choice I’m gonna let you have tonight. You chose to fuck up, and I’m not taking that away from you, sweetheart.”

Bucky desperately wants a look at the alternate universe where Steve got mad at him for taking off his boxers without being told. He nods against the grip, raising his hands above his head in showy obedience.

“Oh. I like that. I think you should keep those there for now. Can you do that for me?” 

“Yes. I’m incredibly strong.”

“I don’t know. I bet I could take you.” He curls his fingers around Bucky’s right forearm and pushes down, or implies pushing, the pressure so light that Bucky could be made of feathers and still resist. But he doesn’t resist. He lets Steve take him effortlessly.

“Hey.” Steve leaves his hand where it is, but now uses it to shake Bucky’s arm. The muscles are so loose and pliant that it flops around “Didn’t I tell you to keep your hands above your head? Do you remember that, Buck?”

Another good alternate universe: the one where Steve got mad at him for resisting.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky mutters, looking down at his own half-submerged thighs. “I thought you were telling me to put it down.”

“No. I was giving you a chance to show off how strong you are. Turns out, you were lying about that.” He draws the floppy arm up vertical, and twists Bucky’s jaw in one huge hand to face him, pointer finger digging into the square edge. Reluctant, Bucky raises his eyes to Steve’s face. “No, keep looking down. Why did you lie to me, Bucky?” 

“I didn’t mean to.”

“That’s good. But you did it anyway, and I’d like to know why.”

“Because I have a bad role model?”

It’s good for Steve that he already said not to look at him, because he’s probably grinning like the Joker when he asks, “How mad do you want me to be?”

“Not mad,” Bucky lies. “Sorry.”  
  
“You have one more chance to give me the right answer before I make you crawl around with my fist in your ass all night, begging for release through a piss-soaked rag.”

 Bucky stutters his way through a moan. Struggles not to try rubbing his dick hands-free against the wet cling of his boxers. He knows the right answer. _Of course_ he knows the right answer. “I lied because I’m too stupid not to, Steve. I’m too stupid to not realize how weak I am. Sorry.”

“Shhh.” Steve wraps his arms around Bucky’s torso, dragging him so he’s pressed to his sweater, dandelion-soft over a hard chest. Two firm kisses to Bucky’s hairline. Bucky keeps his arms as they are, even though it’s awkward at this angle. “You don’t have to be sorry. You’re not this stupid on purpose, right?”  

 “No,” he breathes. “I’m not.”

“I’m glad. You don’t want to know what I’d do if you were.” With another kiss and a light touch, he shoves Bucky away.

He does want to know. Steve knows he wants to know. What he says is, “Since I’m not, can I have something?”

“Oh, besides what I already promised you? Really?”

“Yeah.”

Steve starts scratching his nails along Bucky’s chest, scraping hard here and there but mostly just bringing the blood to the surface. Giving him something to focus on. “Tell me what it is and I’ll think about it.”

“Can you fuck me too?”

“I’m already fucking your face.” Steve pinches his left nipple, making him squeak.

“No, my ass.”

“Your what?”

“My _hole_. Can you fuck my hole? Please. Not a lot. Unless you want to do it a lot.” His next pained squeak turns into an extra, drawn-out, “Please.”

Steve says, “Hmm.” He grabs both of Bucky’s nipples at once and tugs on them. Bucky lurches forward, moaning. “Yeah, of course.”

“Really?”

“I would have anyway.” He _tsks._ “You really assume the worst of me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’ll forgive you for now. Though we do have a problem here.” He plucks at the front of Bucky’s boxers, just to the left of his dick. They drag just enough to make his breath hitch. “I told you I’d honor your choice to keep these, but that’s a little at odds with what you asked for, isn’t it?”

“Oh. You can take them off. I don’t mind.”  
  
“No. I don’t want you making any sacrifices for me.” He slides his hand under Bucky’s ass, lining his fingertips up with the middle. “After all, this hole here is the only part of you I’m going to need. And it’s such a tiny part.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Of course you don’t. But like I said, that’s not your fault.” He squeezes, spreading Bucky’s ass through the fabric momentarily, then takes his hand out of the bath altogether. “Hold on a minute.”

Still looking down at his own legs like Steve told him to before, Bucky listens as Steve opens the medicine cabinet and grabs something metallic. A pair of hair-cutting scissors flash under his eyes. Steve says, “These should do the job, don’t you think?”

“You—Oh.” They’re cheap boxers, from a plastic-wrapped pack at the Duane Reade, or Steve would probably balk at the thought. “You’re strong enough to just tear them, y’know.”

“I’m too strong. I would rip them right off you. This is a delicate operation, asshole.”

“Operation Asshole?” It’s always obvious when Steve is prompting him to make a joke because he thinks it’s too dumb to make himself.

Steve says, “Anyone ever tell you you’re not funny?”

“No.” The closed point of the scissors pokes at his cheek.

“What’d we say about that lying thing?”

“Not to. Sorry.”

“I’ve got better things to worry about right now. Get your hands out of the air; this isn’t a Dixie Chicks concert.” Bucky barks a laugh and does as he’s told. “Now lie down with your knees bent in the air. There we go.” 

At this depth, the water wells up around the sides of his face, covering his ears and brushing the corners of his eyes but leaving his mouth and nose totally free. Lifting his knees rolls his spine uncomfortably into contact with the hard porcelain.

Steve says, “You can still hear me with your ears underwater?” His voice slurs, but yeah, Bucky can hear him.  
  
“I’ve got great hearing.” His own voice drills hard into his ears.

“Yeah, well, you told me you were ‘incredibly strong,’ too, so I want you to respond every time I say something. Prove you’re still listening.”

“Okay.”

“Yep. Just like that.”

“Okay.”

Steve chuckles, and moves to the floor by the faucet. He brushes a hand up the back of Bucky’s thigh, stopping at the hem of the boxers, though he slides one exploratory finger inside. Bucky’s ass clenches in response. Steve’s profile is mostly obscured by his raised right knee. What he can see is a rolled-up sweater sleeve, forearm, red-tipped ear, sharp crown of hair. Glimpses, as though of a mythical creature hiding in the trees.

Now, Steve’s finger trails along his crack, pushing the soaked fabric between his cheeks, circling the entrance to his hole. “Look at that,” he murmurs.

“I can’t.”

Steve jabs at his hole more roughly in heatless reprimand. He pulls the bunched up fabric out, as far from Bucky’s body as he can, which rubs it against his dick, so sparks ignite in his chest and he groans, a broken thing. Like he didn’t hear, Steve pushes Bucky’s legs higher by the now-sweating crooks of his knees and grabs all the loose fabric around his ass in one hand.

“Stay still.”

“Okay.”

A few snips and some prying from Steve’s fingers later, the only friction between Steve’s skin and his comes from a thin layer of bathwater, and he can feel warm air on his hole.  

Then, in place of warmth: the cool, round handle of the scissors. Not penetrating him or anything, just touching the skin around his rim. “Look at that,” Steve echoes. “Exactly the birthday gift I wanted.”

Bucky snorts. “It’s fuckin’ October.”  
  
_Yeah, well, you missed my real birthday_ , goes unsaid.

What Steve does say is, “I decide what month it is, not the guy with his asshole on display.”

“Oh, we’re listening to the guy who wanted an asshole for his birthday?”

Even through the weight of the water, Steve sounds unperturbed. “Nothing wrong with wanting a new toy. Is there?”

He’s dizzied. “N-no. That’s understandable.”

The scissors and Steve’s hands both leave. “Drop your legs and sit up for me for a minute.”

It feels really fucking weird to have his ass in the water now that it’s partly clothed and partly not. He braces his hands on his knees and leans on them, not wanting to risk lolling his head against the wall. Lolling might not count as sitting up.

Steve’s back at the medicine cabinet. Bucky takes the reprieve to glance at his new alarm clock on the floor by the door, a big digital cube. There’s still plenty of time left between _Bath_ and _Steve_.

“What’d, you forget the even larger scissors?” he asks, louder than necessary. “Smaller scissors? Sunscreen? You gonna pop me some Aspirin?”

“I’m gonna pop you in the mouth if you don’t shut up.”

“Pop some Aspirin in my mouth?”

Steve shuts the cabinet and walks over with a bottle in his hand. He uses his free hand to pop Bucky in the mouth, as promised, leaving a sting like they’ve been kissing for hours.

He tries to look repentantly up at Steve, wonderful Steve who won’t even tell him off for goading him into that, who waves the bottle and says, “It’s lubricant. It’s new. I got it to fuck you in the water. Do you have any more stupid questions?”  

“Nah, you guessed all my stupid questions.”

“Good, because I’m not in the answering mood anymore.” He turns the taps, testing the water’s temperature with his hand. As it hits the tops of Bucky’s feet, he notices that it’s not nearly as hot as he would have chosen.

“It’s cold,” he says, which isn’t exactly true.

“Look at me.” Bucky does. Steve’s on the edge of the tub, his hand hovering over the taps. “Is it? Because your face is going to be spending a lot of time submerged.”

He bites the inside of his cheek. Soon, Steve will make him forget the water isn’t scalding. “No,” he admits. “It’s not cold. Sorry.”

“You really have to stop lying. My patience is running out. Lean your head back against the wall and hook your hands under your knees. Show me what I did to your shorts.”

The change in position puts most of his weight on his tailbone, and his elbows, where they rest on either side of the tub. His dick and stomach press into one another, and he rolls his head to the side, letting himself whimper a bit. Steve watches him with less interest than Bucky has _seen_ him exhibit while watching paint dry.

He says, “Wow, I did a great job,” He sticks his finger through the crude opening, circling Bucky’s hole, and Bucky hides his face in his shoulder. If he had a dime for every third hand he had to cover his face, he’d be broke, but he’d be too sad about the lack of a third hand to care.

“No. You’re going to watch me, sweetheart. You’re not going to look away from me at all while we’re here.”   

When Bucky looks at him, it’s with his brow furrowed and his mouth pinched small.

Steve laughs. The water rises, still not warm enough, and Steve finally starts working a lubed finger into Bucky’s ass.

Unable to close his eyes or move much at all, he finds himself whimpering with each thrust. Short sounds that stick to the roof of his mouth. Steve isn’t looking at his face anymore, staring hard at the twitching, exposed hole taking one finger and then another. He wouldn’t even know if Bucky looked away, which makes it wonderful not to. Being good for Steve is its own, private reward.

“So tight in here, Buck. It’s kind of false advertising, don’t you think? Should keep you spread open all the time. Don’t want some poor Tom, Dick, or Harry getting in here, feeling how tight you are, and then being surprised when you turn out to be such a slut, huh?”  

Bucky’s biting the hell out of his own twisted-up face, feeling flushed enough already to make up for the water. “Who—” He yelps when Steve adds another finger. “Who the heck are. Tom and Harry?”

 Steve actually pauses and looks up at Bucky’s face for the first time. “What’re you—Oh. That’s a terrible joke.” He starts fucking into him again, but he’s still looking at Bucky’s face with a small smile. “You look upset, sweetheart. Something wrong?”

“Only that you keep _calling_ me that.”

“Aw, do you not like that?” He’s full-on smirking, and Bucky gives in to the urge to shut his eyes.

The next thing he knows, he’s empty, and his eyes fly open. “Sorry. Sorry, I won’t do that again. I promise. Please keep fucking me.”

Steve huffs. “This is your only second chance. Toys that don’t listen don’t get nice things.”

“I’m the toy? I thought my hole was the toy.”

“There’s a difference? Get your ass higher in the air.”

He obeys. A larger expanse of his back can rest on the floor of the tub now, though he feels more exposed, and there’s more pressure on his dick. He waits until he’s getting fucked to ask, “Are you letting me come tonight?”

“You really asking me that so soon after disappointing me?”

“I’m not asking. I’m checking.”

“I’m putting the definition of ‘asking’ on one of those flashcards.”  That’s all Bucky gets for a while, the only noises in the room his own grunting and whimpering and the squelch of lube and the roar of water filling the tub, nearing where Steve’s fingers enter him.

He breaks. “Steve? Are you letting me?”

“Oh! You’re still here. Sure. You can come any time, Buck.” He sounds distant, distracted, a counter-point to the power he starts giving his thrusts.

Bucky shouts a very literal, “Ah!” before returning to soft whimpers and, “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Steve puts his free hand on Bucky’s knee, squeezing, and Bucky wants so badly to take that hand and kiss it and then stick it down his throat already. Why did he ask for this if it was only going to delay the main event?

Steve pushes down on his knee until most of his ass is submerged in the water. The fucking takes on a new, stranger quality, an increased tightness, and Bucky says, “Jeepers,” and laughs at himself, and Steve takes the hand off his knee and reaches up, rolling his knuckles around on a nipple, and that’s enough.

He comes in his shorts, quaking, with a shout, and Steve keeps fucking him under the water, keeps knuckling at his nipple, as he’s reduced to breathy moans, his bones full of static and his muscles loose and warm.

“Well, that’s enough,” Steve says, and removes his fingers with an embarrassing _glug_ , and turns off the water. “You ready for the fun part?”

Legs still spread wantonly, hands still trapped under his knees, chest heaving, Bucky says, “What the fuck?”

“Aww. The fun part. Remember? Put your legs down and keep your hands on your thighs.”

More comfortable, he’s able to piece himself part of the way together. “I remember. I wasn’t sure you had.”

“Of course. I’m not the one with amnesia here.”

“That’s not how amnesia works.”

“It can. It’s a different kind of amnesia.”

“You’re annoying. Can I kiss you?”

A little laugh. “Your manners are a disgrace. I should send you to finishing school.”

When they were younger, Steve would sometimes jerk him off while making him describe his life at the fictional erotic finishing school, regularly interrupting to complain, “Why am I in this now? I’m not at the finishing school with you,” the answer to which was obviously, “You’re a guest lecturer,” or, “You’re there to observe,” or, “You got lost on the way to the butcher.”

It was the first thing like this they ever did together.

Bucky says, “We have got money now.” He clears his throat. “ _May_ I kiss you?”

“Not what I meant. But thanks for self-correcting. Fine.” Steve puts his face an inch away from Bucky’s, staring at him, unblinking.

The question was, “May I kiss you?” not, “May I be kissed?”

And Bucky does kiss him, licking, first, politely, at his closed mouth, the stupid, Roman-statue curve of it, until Steve parts his lips, inviting him in like he would a vampire.  Like he definitely, definitely would if Bucky were a vampire.

Bucky moans and licks this time at Steve’s bottom front teeth, at the rough inside of his cheek, before kissing him furiously, taking as much as he can from however much time he’s allowed.

To signal that it’s over, Steve bites Bucky’s tongue, and Bucky retreats with a whimper.

“Good.” Steve gets a grimace for his troubles. He goes to wash his hands.

While he has the chance, Bucky glances at the clock. He’s good. Everything’s good.

“So.” Steve returns. He grips the flesh of Bucky’s cheek in his fingers and pulls, so it’s like he’s inserted a fish hook in his mouth, which would be, oh _. Oh._ “How are we feeling about me choking you on my hand, hmm? How are we feeling about me holding you under the water as you fight not to struggle no matter how little air I let you have?” He grabs the other side of Bucky’s face too. “Are we feeling desperate for it?”

“You seem to be.” The stretch of his mouth gives the words fuzzy, rounded corners.

More fingernail goes into the grip. “It wasn’t the royal we. Tell me if you’re desperate.”

“I am. I’m desperate. Give it to me, Steve. Please.”

Breathing is already harder, his chest jumpy with anticipation that grows when Steve lets go, and tells him, “Legs up now. Rest them against the wall.”

“You just told me to put them down!”

“Yeah, and I’ll make you put them up and down as many times as I like. It’s funny.” Bucky exhales loudly through his teeth, and Steve grabs his right leg and drags it upward, hand a vice around his ankle. “Other one too. Chop chop.”

 He chop chops.

There’s no easing in digit-by-digit like there would be if Steve were fisting his ass. Bucky holds his mouth open as wide as he safely can, and Steve tries to shimmy his entire enormous fist into the gape, whispering, “There we go. Let me in.” Only the tip of his thumb makes it in after his curled fingers. His brow scrunches up as he frowns. “Try a little harder, Buck.”

Bucky can’t. Steve, on the other hand, maneuvers his arm so it slopes more steeply, and it’s enough. The whole front of his fist pops right in.  “Much better.”  

Bucky can feel his cheeks bulging. Little aches in his gums and the roof of his mouth. How his tongue ruts uncontrollably against Steve’s fingers. He’s ashamed of that, more than anything, how he has no choice but to slobber all over Steve’s hand with canine gratitude.

The fist pushes in further like the world’s slowest right hook and his throat jolts as he gags around the intrusion. Again. Again. Push, gag, push, gag. His eyes water, locked on Steve, who looks like he’s witnessing a weeping statue of Christ. But it’s just Bucky, unholy, degraded, too aware of the high sound of his labored breaths, echoing in the tunnel Steve’s made of his mouth, and not full-on weeping. Not yet.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Your mouth’s nothing but a gaping hole for my fist to fuck, huh? Isn’t that right?”

Bucky tests to see if he can vocalize like this. What he manages are tiny, birdlike whistles, and after the third whistle, he really starts to gag, tongue flexing, neck pushing his face further onto Steve’s hand. He coughs. It’s ugly, retching. Steve—Steve, Steve. Watches him gag. Puts his free hand on Bucky’s cheek and traces gentle fingers along the soft bits of his jaw beneath his ear.

Then he pulls out, wiping his spit-damp hand off on the bridge of Bucky’s nose.  
  
Meanwhile, Bucky’s eyes grow wetter and hotter, and his mouth feels cavernous, though he’s drooling less than he would have thought.  
  
“Hey,” Steve says, “that wasn’t too terrible, but I did ask you a question. Didn’t I?”

He could technically use words now, but he feels dreamy, reduced to nothing but soft palate and gums. He nods. Steve’s hand is still on his cheek, the other, his perfect fist, dangling in the bathwater.

“That’s right. Do you have an answer for me, or do you need me to repeat myself?”

“Mmm.” He tilts his head into Steve’s touch. Left-handed, he taps in Morse code on Steve’s dangling arm, _Both._

Steve laughs. “Fine. Even though you’re wasting my time. You know I hate redundancy.” Bucky smiles at him dopily. “I said, ‘Your mouth’s nothing but a gaping hole for my fist to fuck, huh?’”

Bucky taps, _Why do you think I’m not using it to talk?_

Steve tsks. “Being a smartass won’t you get far with me.” He’s always been the world’s worst liar.

He pulls Bucky’s hair into a ponytail and uses it to drag him down until his head hangs just above the water. He leaves Bucky’s ears uncovered, so he doesn’t have to worry about waiting for confirmation that his preamble’s been heard, but he pinches his nostrils shut.

He says, “Same rules, Buck. You hear me say something while you’re under, you tap on my arm to let me know. This time, I’m going to be nice. You’ve got three seconds warning. One. Two.”

Bucky’s barely taken a satisfactorily medium-sized breath before Steve’s shoving him under with the hand holding his nostrils.

He keeps his eyes closed under the water. Between that and the tepid temperature, a kind of nothingness around his skin, he doesn’t have to exist in any physical dimension besides hoarded oxygen and Steve’s hard pressure on the cartilage of his nose.

A hand cups the back of his skull and lifts it up and out of the water. All clear, Steve lets go of his nostrils. “Open up.”

It’s the same process as before, no faster or more insistent, but Bucky’s had no time to adjust, to blink the water from his eyelashes or unplaster his sopping hair from his face. He startles at the first prod of knuckles to his tongue, and the muscle instinctively shoves Steve away.

“No. Bad.” He’s staring into Bucky’s mouth when he says it, like he’s talking to the tongue itself. And the tongue, like a dog submitting, flattens and softens until Steve deems it, “Acceptable enough,” and successfully fucks his hand in.  He angles it toward Bucky’s wisdom teeth this time, which gives him more room to move, even if his pinky is hanging out.

One particularly hard thrust makes Bucky’s throat spasm, and he sprays great gobs of saliva around the fist and up Steve’s arm. His next cough is dry, but still violent.

“ _Jesus Christ._ You know you’re actually getting worse at this?” He sniggers and switches to popping his knuckles rhythmically back and forth through Bucky’s lips, forcing him to simulate suckling. “No shock, though, right? I keep thinking I’ll find _something_ you can be trained to do right, but I’ve always been a romantic.”

With the thumb of his other hand, he wipes tears from around Bucky’s eyes. “Shhh. It’s all right, honey. You don’t need to cry. I just need to be rougher on you, don’t I? That’s all you need. And I can do that for you. I won’t let you down.”  

Bucky taps, _Thank you_ , and then his aching jaw is empty, and he inflates his stomach with a deep breath and gets shoved underwater. He’s vibrating under Steve’s hand, worse than he would be if he weren’t focusing so hard on staying still, already halfway to wrecked, and he’s pried out of the floating vibrating darkness, and put back to work as a drooling fuckhole.

On the fifth round of fisting Bucky’s mouth, Steve says, “You’re getting pretty ragged there, Buck. You know I’d love to keep being sweet to you for hours, but I don’t think you can handle much more, poor thing. My poor little toy. All lost and roughed up.”

Bucky whines, and he does, in fact, sound like a toy. A stepped-on chew toy, protesting. The other rounds went by fast, Steve having apparently decided to disorient him with a lack of transitions between activities. It was effective. Even his left arm feels bubblegum-gooey, and he knows his face must be hideous and red.  

“Nope. I’m putting my foot down. I dunk you once more after this and that’s it. Got it?”

He nods, bumping Steve’s arm up and down with the motion. A soft, dark space in his gut tells him to beg for so much more, hours of sweetness, of half-caught breath. But rigidly, intellectually, he knows he doesn’t have hours left in his schedule. _Sex with Steve_ might be an acceptable exception, but there are exceptions, and then there’s flagrant flouting. He knows the difference like the palm of Steve’s hand.

Anyway, supersoldiers’ fisting arms can cramp up like anyone else’s.  

Steve’s rubbing Bucky’s lower posterior gums harshly with his index finger when Bucky’s reeling brain decides on a compromise between gut desire and reality. He taps on the arm skewering his mouth, _Question._

Steve cocks his head, still working over the gums.

_Verbal question_ , he clarifies and Steve pulls out _._

“Can I help you?”

Bucky blinks and swallows a few times. He licks at his stretched-out lips. His voice cracks when he says, “Yeah, maybe.”

Steve strokes his cheekbone with spit-wet knuckles, then leaves them pressed there, motionless. A gesture of patience.

“This last time, do you have to pinch my nostrils?” It feels funny, how little he has to open his mouth to talk.

Steve looks at him askance. “I don’t think you’ll like it if I don’t.”

“I will!” His voice cracks again, though less this time. “It’s a good finale. And you’ll like it too.”

“Oh? Tell me what I’ll like about it.” He takes his knuckles away and crosses his arms, failing to look stern.

“I’ll be coughing and spitting everywhere. I bet my eyes will bug out. You’ll probably need to work to calm me down. It’ll be nice.”

“Hmm. Anything else? I’m not convinced.”

“You can tell me how gross all the spitting and coughing is. Please, Steve.”

“Fine. I’ll make a mess of you. But we were in the middle of something, weren’t we?” Bucky nods, grateful to be past the part that requires real words. “So? Let me back in there, sweetheart.”  

It’s brutal, and Bucky hacks like a first-time smoker, and in spite of himself, tries to wriggle away. He gets it together, taps out, _Sorry,_ before Steve can take it as a real objection. _I’ll do better_ , and he holds himself still as the fist starts to unfurl, levering Bucky’s teeth further apart.

Steve says, “Yeah, just like that,” and then it’s over.

This time, Steve pushes him under with a hand spread over his forehead. He only waits seven seconds to lift him out, but it’s enough. As expected, he’s coughing, bug-eyed, breathing hard. What he didn’t predict was the searing sensation in his nose, same as a snoutful of seawater. He manages to cough, “Can I have. A tissue?”

Steve goes to get a wad of toilet paper, and holds it to up Bucky’s nose. “Blow.”

“I’m not. Five.”

“No, but your hands are wet. Blow.”

Even when there’s definitely no water left in his nasal passages and Steve’s tossed the tissue in the trash, the burn remains, and he’s still coughing, still wildly looking around, still breathing harder than he needs to; his amygdalae are still reared up on their hind legs.

Steve sits on the floor with his spine straight against the tub and grips the back of Bucky’s neck. “Hey, c’mere. Get out of the bath. Come get your horrible germs on me, okay? Can you do that?”

“Yeah.” It comes out a mumble. He slithers his way over the side of the tub and crawls into Steve’s lap. Throws his left arm over his shoulders and kisses the notch of his throat. He says in his ear, “I’m soaking your clothes,” then turns his head to the side to cough.

“It is a pretty big hardship for me.” As if making a point, Steve wraps both arms around Bucky’s chest and pulls him in tighter. They kiss, brief and wet, Steve patting him on the back.

“What are you gonna do about it?”

“Get us both dry clothes, probably.”

There’s still time for that, the clock says. They’re not yet at the _Check security of entire building_ block on his schedule. It isn’t clear whether Steve has figured out that that’s where he goes every night, after kissing him and saying, “I gotta take care of something,” and disappearing for half an hour. The same time every night. The same examination. It’s exhausting.

Not that he _can_ check the security without getting dressed. But it’s best if he doesn’t have to fret about overlap.

He runs his right hand up and down Steve’s spine, nosing at the underside of his jaw. “Can I wear your clothes?”

Steve pets his heavy, wet hair, from parietal to occipital bone. “Any time. I’d like seeing you in them.” 

Bucky sighs heavily against Steve’s skin, weirdly overcome with the thought, considering everything else Steve’s done to him tonight. To be so casually marked as Steve’s property. For Steve to dress him up in his clothes for the joy of looking at him like that. He sighs again, and twitches his burning nose, and wills himself to ooze all over Steve’s solid, real self in spite of his own solid reality.

“Carry me like it’s our wedding night,” he mutters, and Steve stops petting momentarily to tug on some of his hair.

“I’m not doing that. Your arm alone weighs about five-hundred pounds.”

“So? Aren’t you a superhero?”

“Where do you get these ideas, Buck? I’m just a mild-mannered reporter for the Daily Planet.” But Steve gathers him up in his arms and stands, groaning in fake agony.

It takes Bucky a moment to not tense like he’s bracing to be thrown into the wall. When he remembers that he’s here, with someone who would never do that without warning, he goes easily, curling his arms in a loose loop around Steve’s neck. “Are those books even still around?”

“Books?” Steve kicks the door open. “It’s a newspaper. I’m a newspaper reporter.”

“Shut _up._ ”                                                                                                                   

“I thought you were only interested in TV. Branching out into comics?”

“Maybe. They’re kind of the same thing. Low-tech and high-tech.”

“Want to make a comic together?”

“That sounds nice. Remind me when I haven’t been fucked into a fugue state?”

They used to make comics together, he thinks, close to a century ago. He remembers slumping against Steve’s bony side, tossing a rubber band ball in the air, idly telling a story and pausing here and there for Steve to sketch something for what he’d just heard.

Every weird, blobby, slithery, or robotic space alien Steve ever drew had Bucky’s face, and he’d giggle to himself about it, and Bucky would change the course of the story so that the Bucky Aliens became the valiant heroes.

Their collaborations now might turn out more polished. They probably won’t be on notebook paper.

In Steve’s room, he’s deposited onto the bed from high enough that he bounces. “Here it is,” he says, staring up with wide eyes. “The honeymoon suite. I thought I’d never see one.” For a honeymoon suite, it’s kind of sad. The bedding is pretty: a riot of florals and stripes. But the walls are bare, and all of the furniture is flat-packed, boxy, and white.

“You excited, dear?” Steve tweaks his nipple and Bucky shrieks, then groans in impatience.

“I need clothes. I’m cold.” Come to think of it, he really is, no longer cradled by Steve’s absurd heat. Water beads, persistent, down his body, soaking into the quilt beneath him. He shivers, and annoyance flashes through him. This is hardly the coldest he’s ever been.

But that shouldn’t matter. Cold is cold, right? Degrees of cold are imaginary. All discomfort is supposed to be valid or something stupid like that.

For a count of five heartbeats, he shifts his focus to running his right thumb over his middle fingernail, and to Steve combing through dresser drawers like they contain an entire card catalogue. Then he stretches out, getting his wet hair all over the pillows, and closes his eyes.

Quiet whispers of fabric. Quiet thud of closing drawers.

When he opens his eyes, it’s because Steve’s weight dips the bed. He’s smiling at Bucky, and dressed in a tight t-shirt advertising some school he never went to—probably grabbed from the Goodwill without a close inspection—and new jeans. 

 He holds up a bundle of clothes. “You want me to dress you?”

“Nah. I’ll be your Talky Tina next time. Give ‘em here, please and thank you.”

“Wow, have you been doing a finishing school correspondence course?”

“It was meant to be a surprise, but you caught me.” He takes the clothes, and stands to dress. Black sweatpants and a plaid pajama top, both ill-fitting in different ways, which only underlines the greedy way Steve’s staring at him. He feels like a peeled grape. There’s a significant possibility he’s going to start crying—and with his nose not all the way done running from before—purely from how unambiguous it is that Steve has him. Owns him; possesses him; is intensely committed to surrounding him in a warm, pink, flying bubble like Bucky’s Glinda the Good Witch. Like Bucky is good.  

He walks to where Steve is still sitting on the bed. Standing in front of him, he taps on his arm, _You’re really warm._ Something approaching an explanation of the lurching ocean in his heart.

_Thanks_ , Steve taps on Bucky’s palm, then takes that hand in his, not to stop him from using further Morse code, Bucky thinks; just so they’ll be holding hands when he adds, “You are too.”

Still, Bucky doesn’t want to tap for the rest. He loves to say aloud to Steve, “And you have pretty eyes.” Steve looks at him like this is outrageous. “What? I mean it.”

“I just think it’s nice that it’s the twenty-first century and that’s still your default compliment for me.”

“It’s not a _default._ I mean it earnestly—”

“—Really! I think it’s nice!”

“ _I mean it earnestly every time._ You have pretty eyes, and I like your nose, and I like your voice, and I trust you.”

“And I’m really warm.”

“Yeah. So shut up about ‘default.’ Yeesh.” Before Steve can stand up, Bucky sits on the floor by the bed and leans his head on his thigh. They’re still holding hands.

“How’s your jaw?”

“Fucking sore. You were aces, I swear to God. You fucking talented weirdo.” He rubs his head up and down. “That might be the hardest you’ve ever made me gag.”

“You took a lot more than I was expecting.” He uses their joined hands to affectionately smack Bucky’s cheek. “I hadn’t realized you were ninety percent drool.”

“And what’s the other ten percent?”

“That’s a no-brainer. You’re ninety percent drool and ten percent whimpering.”   

“I sound unwieldy. It’s a wonder you carried me. I would’ve made me walk to the honeymoon suite.”

“I thought about dropping you, but you looked so cute and helpless. You know, I wouldn’t drop a cartoon kitten either.” Yeah, he probably will start to cry.

Subtle as he can, he rotates Steve’s hand so he can read his watch.

Almost time to leave and check the security.

He really doesn’t want to. He has to anyway.

 

 

-

 

 

As he’s pouring himself a bowl of cereal, he realizes Steve’s not in the apartment. Next realization: there’s a pile of index cards in front of Bucky’s usual place at the table. Each is a different pastel color, and Steve’s sketched twining floral patterns around their borders. The top card says “TOP SECRET” on one side and on the other side, “NOT WHAT A USEFUL FUCKHOLE YOU ARE HAHA EVERYONE KNOWS.” The next card defines the word “multitasking.” The third defines the word “asking.” The fourth, in prim cursive, asks, “What does Steve care about?” The flipside answers, “Not your opinion.” The fifth says, “I ORDER YOU TO,” followed by the secret answer, “DO YOUR BEST. OR NOT IF YOU’RE NOT UP TO IT. Oh geez this is wishy washy. I’m including it so you can laugh at me later.”

The penultimate card says, “YOU CAN JERK OFF ON THESE IF YOU WANT.” The final card clarifies, “HAHA ‘IF.’ I’M A COMEDIAN. WHAT A GOOD JOKE. ‘IF’ BUCKY’S A WEIRD LITTLE PERVERT.”

Bucky makes a high-pitched noise, then looks around self-consciously. The kitchen is as empty as it was when he walked in. He makes the noise again because no one can stop him, and neatens the pile, banging each edge on the table. It’s a toss-up whether he’d rather jerk off on the cards at 1:30 p.m. (his time slot for _Acknowledge ownership of body_ ) or go to a fabric store at 11:00 a.m. and buy a strand of gossamer ribbon for tying the cards into a little packet that he can carry around at all times. Carrying around something stained with his semen is crossing some kind of line, he thinks.

Anyway, more than he’s hard from looking at the cards (and yes, he is partially), he feels like he might be happy making little high-pitched noises forever. He’s Glinda the Good Witch in her pink bubble again, and Steve isn’t even here, let alone staring him down with wolfish, gleeful need.

Mouth full of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, head in one hand, he traces, with a metal fingertip, the lilies that skim the word “fuckhole.” He swallows and picks up the card that turned out wishy-washy, and he kisses Steve’s embarrassed handwriting, a little bigger but more cramped than how he usually writes. He kisses it and closes his eyes and goes back to eating cereal and contemplating what color of ribbon would make sense to wrap around the textual embodiment of his heart.

Colors are hard to judge. He’s been wearing a lot of black and blue for over two years. For maybe longer.  

 

 

-

 

 

“Tell me about somewhere you were,” Steve says, his voice liquescent with impending sleep.

This is a game they play sometimes. It was Bucky’s idea; Steve wouldn’t, he thinks, have pried without that go-ahead; Steve, he thinks, has a greater respect for personal secrets than anyone besides Natasha. The game is two-fold: the first fold is the truth of it, the genuine filling in of a two-year-long interstice hard and terrifying between them; the second fold is the opportunity for Bucky to embellish. Steve has always loved Bucky’s love of stories, how much better than him Bucky is at making shit up.

They both know Bucky will embellish, and it’s soothing. It makes filling in the gaps hurt less.

Bucky never asks in return, “Tell me about where _you_ were,” because he knows the answer. _Looking for you._ And that will never hurt less, not really, for either of them.

This time, though, he thinks of a variation. He says, “No. I want something from you first.”

They’re curled up together on Bucky’s table-bed, draped in a thick quilt Steve insisted on pulling from the linen closet, even though both their bodies run hot. Something in quilts comforts Steve. In the morning, Bucky will have sleep-wriggled out from under to lay on top, pressing the edge down around Steve like the crimping on a dumpling, holding him safe.

“Oh yeah?” Steve traces Bucky’s ribs through his thin tank top. Bucky shivers with how light he keeps the touch.

“Yeah. All’s fair. Can you tell me about somewhere you pictured me?”

No hesitation. “On a beach.”

“A _beach_? And what’d I do about the arm? Or was I the fully dressed creep wearing gloves on the beach?”

“You’d painted your whole body silver. You pretended you were one of those men who stands on the boardwalk and acts like a robot for loose change.”

Bucky is suddenly, brilliantly mad at himself for not thinking of that when he was in California, though: “Wouldn’t the paint wash off in the ocean?”

“I said on a beach, not in the ocean. Pay attention.” He slaps Bucky softly on the thigh. “You watched the ocean.”

“Oh. You remember I like that?”

“Well, I remember you telling me once you were really watching the ladies in their bathing suits.”

“Yeah, well.” Bucky pushes his face against Steve’s shoulder, pushes their chests flush together. “I remember you telling me that I was a shitty liar. Like you’re one to talk. You said I was too much of a gentleman.”

“We all know what ‘gentleman’ was code for now, though. Don’t we?”

Bucky says, “Mmm.” He rubs his face on Steve’s collarbone, leaving a small kiss.

For his troubles, he gets his head pulled back by the hair. It barely stings his scalp.

“ _Don’t we know_?”

Bucky squirms in the hold, and Steve gets the message and pulls harder, so Bucky’s throat is offered up and he can’t help but grinning.

“ _Yeah._ We know. I’m a fucking queer. Gerroff me.”

He does not gerroff. “Incorrect. I meant you only have eyes for me.”

“Liar. And narcissist. In actuality, I’m hot for the guy who sells flowers three blocks over.”

“I don’t doubt it. Because he looks like me.”  
  
It isn’t completely untrue, but he looks more like Paul Newman. “As I was saying. Narcissist.”

Steve puts Bucky back to work nuzzling his collarbone, and Bucky hums against his skin as Steve continues talking.

“So I pictured you on a beach, but it wasn’t a specific beach. It was just somewhere peaceful.”

“So nowhere in New York. A traitor to your roots.” One of his favorite jokes, as the only person on this table who’s potentially assassinated an American president.

“Oh, definitely nowhere in New York. But you threw a message in a bottle into the waves before you left. Don’t ask what it said. I figured it was none of my business.”

“I bet it said, ‘Steven Grant Rogers is a fucking sappy weirdo.’”

“Don’t tell anyone.”

“Who’m I gonna tell, a priest?”

“Lord, no.” Steve pulls him up to kiss his eyelid, and Bucky sighs. A noise like cotton candy.

“Go to fucking sleep,” Steve murmurs.

“Look who’s fucking talking. Don’t you want me to tell you somewhere I was?”

“In the morning. Over breakfast. Tell me then or else.”

“Oh, if it’s ‘or else.’ Looking forward to it. You should feed me toaster waffles while I do.”

“I was going to eat those myself. They’re almost gone.”

He wonders if anyone else in the world knows exactly how whiny Steve can sound sometimes, and smiles into Steve’s chest. “You can’t fool me, Rogers.”

Steve says, “Don’t you dare tell me what I can and can’t do,” which means he’s planning how exactly to feed Bucky the toaster waffles.

It isn’t time yet, according to his schedule, to fall asleep, so he listens to Steve’s heartbeat with open eyes, and frowns gratefully as Steve’s obnoxious snoring starts up in his ear.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Brief depiction of Bucky having a panic attack while trying to teach himself CPR on a manikin that isn't responding correctly to his breaths. He accidentally tears some of his hair out. 
> 
> Mention of Bucky having previously been really paranoid about strangers planting cameras in bathrooms. 
> 
> Throughout the fic, Bucky is obsessed with sticking to a regimented daily schedule. He has some self-loathing about it that causes him to be afraid of Steve finding out.


End file.
